54 pages • 1-hour read
Chances Are . . .
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Prologue and Chapters 1-4Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of mental illness.
Prologue Summary
Three 66-year-old friends—Lincoln Moser, a commercial realtor from Las Vegas; Teddy Novak, a small-press publisher from Syracuse; and Mickey Girardi, a working-class musician from Connecticut—reunite at Lincoln’s inherited house on Martha’s Vineyard, 44 years after their college graduation. Flashbacks establish their origins as scholarship students who worked as “hashers” in the cafeteria of a wealthy Theta sorority house at Minerva College in Connecticut, where they formed an unlikely but enduring friendship. They also befriended a Theta sorority member named Jacy Calloway, a spirited, wealthy student who was beloved by all three friends but was engaged to Vance, a young man from a similarly upper-class family.
A pivotal flashback reveals the 1969 draft lottery that alters their destinies. Mickey draws number 9, virtually guaranteeing that he will be drafted to fight in the Vietnam War. Lincoln draws 189 and Teddy draws 322, so they are both in safer territory. When Jacy consoles Mickey after his devastating draw, Lincoln experiences an ironic stab of jealousy at her show of affection and silently chastises himself for his momentary lack of perspective.
Further flashbacks detail the men’s individual backstories. As a teenager, Lincoln had a troubled relationship with his domineering father, Wolfgang Amadeus “Dub-Yay” Moser, a mine owner from Arizona, and his quieter mother, Trudy Moser, who secretly revealed to a teenage Lincoln that the family’s Chilmark house on Martha’s Vineyard was always her inheritance, not her husband’s and would be held in trust for Lincoln. Teddy had an awkward upbringing as the son of two distant English teachers, and his adolescence was complicated by a basketball injury that ended his athletic aspirations and led him toward academic and religious pursuits. Mickey had a working-class childhood in West Haven, Connecticut, where his unexpected musical and academic talents propelled him beyond his family’s expectations and allowed him to earn a college scholarship. The three men were randomly assigned as freshman roommates and forged a lifelong friendship that transcended their different class backgrounds.
Chapter 1 Summary: “Lincoln”
In September 2015, the three friends reunite for a weekend on Martha’s Vineyard. The narrative alternates between this present-day reunion and extensive flashbacks to their formative years at Minerva College from 1968 to 1971, focusing on the unresolved mystery of what happened to their mutual friend, Jacy Calloway, who disappeared after leaving their group weekend together on the same island in 1971.
Lincoln arrives at the Chilmark house on a Friday, a day before his friends are scheduled to join him. He visits his realtor, Martin, in Edgartown to discuss the possibility of listing the property for sale. Martin warns him that his neighbor, Mason Troyer, has a questionable reputation and has expressed interest in purchasing the land. Lincoln calls his wife, Anita, to discuss his conflicted feelings about selling the house; he wonders whether doing so would betray his late mother’s wishes.
Back at the house, Lincoln sees Troyer and an unidentified woman lounging naked on their deck, so he retreats inside, feeling unsettled by the encounter. He recalls a college incident in which Mickey punched a fraternity pledge and Jacy insisted that all three men apologize to the fraternity for the disruption. Lincoln reflects on his current financial troubles and his growing feelings of aging, while his unease about Troyer’s presence continues to intensify.
Chapter 2 Summary: “Teddy”
Meanwhile, Teddy rides the ferry to Martha’s Vineyard, plagued by mounting anxiety about the reunion. He periodically experiences what he calls “spells,” which sometimes resemble panic attacks and sometimes manifest as undefined fugue states. Feeling the precursor to one of these episodes, he worries that the weekend will destabilize his fragile mental health. As the ferry heads toward the island, he reflects on his career as the editor of Seven Storey Books, a small press that he founded with support from his friend and former college president, Theresa Whittier, for whom he harbors romantic feelings that he has never acted upon. Because the press now faces closure, he feels additional stress.
As the ferry approaches the dock, Teddy momentarily mistakes a young woman for Jacy, and the moment of misperception triggers a panic attack that leaves him shaken. Lincoln meets him at the pier, and they go to a tavern in Oak Bluffs to catch up. Their conversation turns to their aging parents and their shared memories of Jacy, but they carefully avoid discussing the painful details of her disappearance.
Chapter 3 Summary: “Lincoln”
Lincoln wakes on Saturday morning, disturbed by a dream about Troyer. He immediately calls his wife, Anita, who confirms his fears by recounting a past incident in which Troyer made her uncomfortable with his obliquely threatening presence while she was alone at the house. This revelation deepens Lincoln’s concern about his neighbor’s intentions and behavior.
Mickey arrives on his Harley Davidson motorcycle, and Lincoln and Teddy are delighted to note that he exhibits the same outgoing mannerisms that he always did. Mickey immediately sets the tone of the reunion by making Bloody Marys for the group, and his boisterous presence helps to reestablish their old camaraderie. While the three friends relax on the deck, they once again observe Troyer and the naked woman lounging outside on the neighboring property. Mickey recognizes Troyer as the same man who groped Jacy during the friends’ visit to the Vineyard in 1971; at the time, Mickey came upon the scene and punched Troyer so hard that he broke the man’s jaw. Upset by this reminder of the incident, Mickey goes into the house. When Lincoln follows to check on him, Mickey admits that being on the island makes Jacy feel more real to him. He also states plainly that Jacy is “[g]one as in long” (67).
Chapter 4 Summary: “Teddy”
Teddy admits to Lincoln that he may need to leave the reunion early if his “spells” worsen. After Lincoln departs for Edgartown, Teddy borrows a bicycle to explore the island roads. As he rides, he reflects on Jacy’s college engagement to a man whose name he struggles to recall, remembering only that it might have been Vance, Lance, or Chance.
A flashback reveals a night when the friends had returned from a dog track where Jacy had won a large bet. Upon their return, Jacy’s sorority house president, Christine, confronted her about spending time with the “three of these clowns” (72), disapproving of Jacy’s association with the scholarship students. In a defiant gesture, Jacy kissed each of the three friends to provoke Christine and assert her independence.
In the present, Teddy continues his bike ride and comes to a fork in the road. Despite knowing that he should avoid places that trigger his anxiety, he consciously chooses the path that leads toward the Gay Head cliffs.
Prologue and Chapters 1-4 Analysis
Russo’s opening chapters establish the three protagonists’ ongoing struggle with The Unknowable Past and the Fallibility of Memory as their return to Martha’s Vineyard forces them to sift through their recollections of their college friendship and the events leading up to Jacy’s disappearance. Notably, the narrative structure itself reinforces this theme through its use of temporal fragmentation and multiple perspectives, creating a “patchwork” quality to the novel as Lincoln and the others piece together their individual memories into a broader whole. Lincoln even admits that his “memory [is] increasingly porous these days” (23), and the variable level of detail in all three friends’ flashbacks aligns with this statement. Although some details fall by the wayside, Lincoln recalls the tense moments of the Vietnam draft lottery with vivid specificity, describing the anxious huddle around the tiny black-and-white television, Mickey’s dire drawing of the number nine, and even the aluminum tub of beer. However, his inability to remember his own reactions during that pivotal moment stands as a suggestive testament to the unreliability of memory.
The friends’ recollections also establish the challenges of Defining Masculinity Through Class and Character, for as young men at Minerva College, they soon find that their working-class status limits them to the perpetual position of outsiders amongst the college’s elite social hierarchy. Even within their job as “hashers,” their designation as either “kitchen slaves” (4) or “face men” (3) creates an internal caste system that mirrors these broader class divisions. In this context, Mickey’s deliberate choice to remain among the pots and pans rather than advancing to the dining room represents his conscious rejection of the arbitrary standards of social promotion. Even the draft lottery reflects these fundamental class differences, for the necessity of watching the lottery on “crappy little set” (23) in the rear of the Theta house reinforces their marginalized social position. In response to the elitism that surrounds them, Mickey, Lincoln, and Teddy forge a new collective identity as the “Three Musketeers,” a conception that inevitably casts Jacy in the role of D’Artagnan, the incongruous “fourth” musketeer whose presence galvanizes the other three.
Within this context, the draft lottery introduces the novel’s focus on The Collision of Chance, Fate, and Personal Choice, as the random selection of birthdays determines the men’s life trajectories and denies them any semblance of individual agency. The tension between chance and choice steals the savor from the friends’ remaining college days and sours their perspective on life. This shift in worldview also permeates the present-day narrative as the three friends finally confront the long-term consequences of that random evening.
Throughout these early chapters, the Chilmark house operates as a complex symbol that embodies multiple thematic concerns. For Lincoln’s mother, Trudy, the property represents her last connection to her authentic self, which she has been forced to suppress in the decades of her less-than-blissful marriage to “Dub-Yay” Moser. In her mind, the Chilmark house will always be a place to celebrate endless days in which “[the] floors got sandy and nobody minded” (12) and “[the family] didn’t go to church all summer” (12). On a more practical level, her sole ownership of the house becomes the means of her resistance to her husband’s domination, for the property is the one thing that she refuses to surrender, despite his demands. In the present-day narrative, the meaning of the house in Lincoln’s eyes shifts yet again, for it is now both anchor to the past and a potential sacrifice to a more stable financial future. The property has passed directly to Lincoln, bypassing his father entirely, and this fact establishes it as a matrilineal legacy that challenges Dub-Yay’s strident patriarchal attempts to assert his authority. Yet as Lincoln finally revisits the house itself, its physical decay mirrors the deterioration of the memories it contains, and his wanderings represent his attempts to recreate and understand his own past and that of his friends.
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